I don't mean to be flip, but all this just means you should zoom in or explore your neighborhood.

The fact that I can zoom in as a workaround doesn't change the fact that the stars are too small to see when zoomed out. If the zoomed out view is meant to be useful for anything, it's going to need to have stars you can distinguish from the background eye candy.

Hmm i'm not a design guru, but buttons act usualy this way. i will see what miu says about it. could surely made better.

Buttons which act that way are also usually "pseudo-3D" to begin with, so that the small movement down and to the right makes it look like the button is being depressed. In this case, the buttons have a solid outline, without any shading to make them look 3D. Usually this sort of button does not move down and to the right, but rather highlights itself when clicked.

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Quote:

Regarding the galaxy map fleet icon: [...]

I don't think so. If you do it like you suggested you might end up with two buttons which are beyond a single mouse position. The fleet btn responds is only in place to inform you about entering the fleet btn area. It was difficult for me to hit those buttons. I usualy had to try several times to hit them.

I don't understand what you're saying... "two buttons which are beyond a single mouse position"?

I think the rest of what you wrote was explaining why the mouseover effect was added. I didn't say this should be removed, however. I said that the area in which the larger icon/button is shown should be the area of the larger icon/button, not the area of the smaller icon/button it replaces to give feedback for a mouseover.

There are separate icons for fleets with and without move orders, but if I have three fleets a system, all with or all without move orders, there's just the single icon. When clicked, that single icon/button opens up the fleets window, in which the three fleets are listed.

Is there supposed to be a separate icon for each fleet at the system in all cases?

I don't see how that makes it problematic to use the larger icon area for the mouseover highlight. It's just a matter of enlarging the "Active" area of the icon/button so that it matches the highlighted icon size, rather than the unhighlighted size. (or changing the sizes of the icons... which should be independent of map zoom anyway, I think)

I'd like to make a new suggestion or two, and simultaneously bump this thread so some old suggestions might get some attention...

It'd be nice if the scrolling dotted line that indicates ship move orders was enhanced in several ways:

-Highlight currently selected fleet's path differently. Right now, you can't easily tell which move path corresponds to which fleet. I suggest a somewhat dimmer / greyish animated line for not-selected fleets, and a bright white line for the selected fleet.

-Indicate what portion of a multi-turn move order will be travelled during the next turn. It's hard to get a good sense of distance scale with then map can zoom in and out.

-Have the first portion of the move order animated line go from the fleet icon's location to a spot half-way along the first starlane leg of the journey, then along the starlane to the first system that will be reached, rather than going all the way to the first system without following any of the first starlane's path. This would make things clearer in some cases, and nicer looking IMO.

-Give some way to discern which move order goes which way when two fleets have order paths that travel along the same stretch of starlane for part of the way. Right now, it's difficult or impossible to tell which fleet is going where after their pathes diverge.

Other improvements:

-Make fleet icons stay the same size, independent of zoom level!! (please!!) Right now, zooming out makes it almost impossible to find the one-pixel hotspot to click a fleet. (Make the hotspot larger in general, actually: the size of the larger mouseover-highlighted fleet icon, rather than the unhighlited icon).

To show the length that a ship willl move each turn:
Replaced the dashed line with an Elongated diamond arrow that is the length to be moved each turn, a ripple passes down the length of it to indicate directions. (try to visualize it)

-------(Ship) >>>>>>>)>>>>>>>)>>>>>>>)>>>(Destination)

As you can see it will be 4 turns to reach the destination
Also we could color the arrow based on the Empire color/s, currently selected fleet obviusly gets highlighted

On a similar vein of though it would be nice to have some Engine Exaust out of the back of the ship equal to the amount it moved on the PREVIUS turn.

In my opinion ships Exiting a system shoud be Place ON the lane rather then in the Lower left corner of the system, to avoid confusion we bump the ship Icon out enough that it wont overlap with the "waiting at system" Ship Icon even if the starlane comes in at that particular angle. If we cant do that then make the dashed line pass First pass though the current system so we dont see the long (ugly) line running almost parellel the whole way to the destination system.

If I'm reading Impaler right...basically make it so each dash of the dotted line is equal to the distance the ship will travel each turn? I like that. Only problem I see is that if you have different fleets with different speeds moving on the same starlane the overlap might make it look just like a solid line, but if each of the dashes had arrowheads...hmm...I might be feeling a mockup comming on...

Here is a Mockup of the Exaust trail, its based on one of the Pictures under our Screen Shot Section. The exaust is nice and transparent and tapers off away from the sthip to a length equal to the ships movment.

I also changed from white Dashes to Empire Colored Dots, some of theses Dots would become > markers to indicate the turn by turn position of the ships.

The "exhaust" trails look good. I'd been worried before that they were going to look like actual plumes of exhaust, but those look more like highlight glows. Indicating the distance travelled in the previous turn in that way would be excellent.

Regarding the dots, and >'s to indicate future turn's movement progress, why do you need dots and >'s? I'd just put >'s or dots at the expected locations of the fleet up to its destination. It's not really necessary to fill in the space between the dots with static markers. If the dots were animated and the >'s were fixed, that might be good though. I'd also suggest an option somewhere to indicate the "ETA" for each >, as after 4 or 5, it can be hard to keep track. Highlighting the >'s or dots of the selected fleet is also a good idea.

Regarding the dots, and >'s to indicate future turn's movement progress, why do you need dots and >'s? I'd just put >'s or dots at the expected locations of the fleet up to its destination. It's not really necessary to fill in the space between the dots with static markers.

This is exactly what I was going to say (show), if I'd gotten around to doing a mock-up. Rather than animated dots, though, just have the >'s glow at an offset pulse. Err, kinda hard to describe what I mean by this, kinda like movie theatre / marquee "chasing" light strings, but none of them go black, just fade brighter and fainter.

_________________Good afternoon! This is the Earth Alliance embassy diplomatic office. My name is Alex. How may I assist you?HUMANS! BLAUGHRAN EMPIRE CLAIMS PLANET KREIGHTON! YOU GIVE RAY GUN SCIENCE OR BLAUGHRANS DESTROY HUMANS ON KREIGHTON!!!

Having just compiled FreeOrion, I started it up, made a new large galaxy, and saw this:

<Snipped Picture>

I think something needs to be done to make the game stars more distinct from the background stars when zoomed out (without starlanes visible)

I'd suggest reducing the density of the background stars first... and making them a bit fainter and/or blurring them slightly. Could also replace some of them with sprites of galaxies or nebulae or other such things.

Why not get rid of the starfield altogether. Instead, the background could be reduced to just nebulae and the eternal black.

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